Tag Archive > Jeff Williams

NPB Player Blogs in English

» 26 August 2008 » In npb » Comments Off on NPB Player Blogs in English

Following up on last week’s post on blogs by Japanese NPB players, here’s a quick rundown of blogs that are written in English by foreign-born NPB players. The selection is thinner, but there are a few good ones out there.

Of course, the best English content on NPB is maintained by fans — namely Deanna, Simon, the Tsubamegun guys, EWC, and the community at JapaneseBaseball.com. But I think just about 100% of the visitors to this blog are already familiar with those excellent sites, so let’s move on to the player’s blogs.

  • By far the most insightful and entertaining of the lot is CJ Nitkowski‘s blog. CJ, if you’re reading this, well done!
  • Another left-handed reliever, Hanshin’s Jeff Williams is good for about one post a month in his blog. Jeff is one of the longer-tenured gaijin players in NPB, and that shows through in his writing.
  • Giants closer Marc Kroon has a blog as well, but hasn’t updated it in a while.
  • Yet another reliever, Nippon Ham closer Michael Nakamura has a blog on ballplayers.jp, where a number of notable players maintain blogs.
  • Finally a batter: Alex Ramirez‘s site isn’t so much of a blog as a photo gallery, and as you might expect the photos are very Rami-centric. Note the Engrish in the page title.
  • Bobby Valentine has got to be the most fan-friendly manager in Japan right now, and accordingly mantains his blog in English and Japanese. I’m not aware of another NPB manager having a blog, but I could be off on that.
  • And least but not quite least, it’s worth mentioning Brad “the Animal” Leslie’s site. Animal pitched for in Japan for a few years after his stint in the big leagues, then retired to a career in the nutty Japanese game shows that eventually made it to American cable.

Anyone know of any others that I’m missing?

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NPB Bullet Points (2008/07/21)

» 21 July 2008 » In npb » Comments Off on NPB Bullet Points (2008/07/21)

English Links:

Japanese Links:

  • New Hanshin reliever Chris Resop has arrived in Japan. “Great!” he said adding, “they really cheer feverishly. I’ve never been to this kind of ballpark before. I’ve never seen this in America.” (note: translation of a translation).
  • Uehara pitched two innings and struck out three in Yomiuri’s 4-1 loss to Yokohama.
  • Former Twin Lew Ford has been demoted to Hanshin’s farm team for the third time this year.

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